Bush's Man From Humble

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Senate Democrats told TIME last week that they don't plan to block Gonzales' nomination; they just want to rough him up a bit. "It's encouraging that the President has chosen someone less polarizing," said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York. "We will have to review his record very carefully, but I can tell you already he's a better candidate than John Ashcroft."

Besides, Democrats are saving their strength for Bush's next nomination, one that could come within a matter of weeks. That would fill the Supreme Court opening that will be left by the ailing Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. A 25-year G.O.P. court watcher noted last week that Bush may get as many as three chances to elevate a conservative to the Supreme Court, and predicted that Bush would nominate Gonzales after he has "gotten this Abu Ghraib stuff out of the way." The Justice Department, in this view, would act like the rinse cycle of a dishwasher.

It is not entirely clear that Bush faces a confirmation fight over a replacement for Rehnquist if it amounts to, as a Senate Democratic aide put it, "trading an 80-year-old right-wing conservative for a younger right-wing conservative. You are not actually changing the balance of power." But if a moderate or liberal Justice, such as John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Sandra Day O'Connor, retires, the balance on the bench will be at stake--particularly when it comes to the fate of the court's 1973 abortion ruling in Roe v. Wade, which conservatives have said they would like to overturn. If Bush tries to replace any of those Justices with younger, fire-breathing conservatives, said the official, "then it's a fight." --Reported by Matthew Cooper, Viveca Novak, Elaine Shannon and Douglas Waller/Washington and Cathy Booth Thomas/Houston